


shadows are falling

by skywalkwithme



Category: The Beatles
Genre: F/F, F/M, Female George Harrison, Female John Lennon, Female Paul McCartney, Female Ringo Starr, Genderswap, Period-Typical Sexism, Slow Burn, basically i changed some genders but not others, early beatles, glacially slow, very slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-04-28 13:51:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14450616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skywalkwithme/pseuds/skywalkwithme
Summary: Joanne Lennon's starting a band.  And Pauline McCartney's going to join it-as soon as she learns how to play.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Posted this earlier but have edited it a bit :) Title is from Oh Boy by Buddy Holly

\----------30th June 1957----------

It begins when Fanny Vaughan's boyfriend Bert Collins is hired to play at a church fete. Well, you could also say it started when she and Bert started dating, which was at Jim Mueller's party. Pauline set them up. Fanny liked to chatter and Bert was one of those silent, stoic lads, silence says a thousand words, et cetera, so Pauline thought between them they'd balance it out. Anyway, she was regretting it now that Fanny wanted to drag her out to some suburban churchyard drag.

"Come on, Pauly." Fanny said, leaning forwards and tilting her head up plaintively. "Bert's real nervous, he's been out practicing all week."

Pauline sighs and picks at her lunch- hot curry. The caf is sweltering in the late June heat, and her curls are sticking to her forehead. She's never felt less in the mood for curry.

"I don't want no one to be there for him, Pauly-"

She stirs her food. "It's all the way out in bloody Woolton-"

"Ain't exactly Antarctica, is it? It's only twenty minutes on the 15- oh, there you are, here he comes." Fanny throws her head up and waves across the caf. Bert and Roy are lumbering through the packed room. It's good Roy is so tall, or she never would've seen them over the heads of every other student in the school. "Bert! Bert!" yells Fanny over the din. Bert nods and bobs his head obligingly, trying to push around a cluster of seventh forms clattering around with their lunch trays. 

"'Ello there." he says, once he's within hearing distance- which, in that cafeteria, is about twelve inches away. Roy claps a hand on Pauline's shoulder and throws himself down onto the bench next to her.

"Christ," she says, putting a hand over her face, "Stinking to high heaven, the both a ye." Both Roy and Bert are covered in sweat.

Roy pulls her curry towards him and plucks up the spoon from the tray. "Gonna eat this?"

She wrinkles her nose. "Nah. Gotta watch my figure anyway." Roy digs in with a machine-like intensity, missing the opportunity for a compliment. 

Bert wraps an arm around Fanny's shoulders. "Bastards from Churchill beatin' us in football again. Fuckin ref is off his bloody rocker- one a' them straight turfed Mer and he en't say nothin'."

"Ar." Roy agrees from his food. 

"I was tellin' Pauly about yer show on Sunday." Fanny says, skipping over the subject of football entirely. She looks Pauline in the eye.

"Oh, ah?" Bert says.

Pauline sighs. "Yeah. Might come by."

"Oh, ye don't 'ave to." Bert says immediately.

Fanny pats his hand. "Nah, Bert, we're both comin'. Can't say no now we're all excited."

"Yeah." Pauline says resignedly. 

Roy surfaces from his food. "Ar, Bert, this that skiffle group you're always goin' on about?"

"The Drumbeats." says Fanny supportively.

Bert nods. "Ta, only we 'avent got a drummer yet."

Roy throws his arm around Pauline's shoulder too. Up close, she can smell how hot and sweaty he is even more strongly. "Ah, Pauly, don't you like skiffle?"

"S'pose." she says offhandedly. 

"Ah, there's a few skiffle groups up. There's folks from Derbyshire- the Wanderers- and some bird up solo." Bert says.

Fanny frowns. "A one-girl skiffle group?"

"Name's Joanne or some such." says Bert.

"What school?" asks Fanny.

"Dunno- think Quarrybank?"

"D'you think it's Joanne Lennon?" Fanny says.

"Who?" says Roy.

Fanny looks pleased to know something exclusive. "She blacked Betty Coller's eye back in January at a party at Henry Miller's place. Jenny Fischer saw the whole thing."

"Why?" Pauline asks.

She shrugs. "Dunno. Thought Jenna was doin' her boyfriend or somethin'."

Pauline laughs. "Wouldn't be surprised if she was right."

"Ay, I know-" Fanny begins. Just then, the bell rings, and the cafeteria erupts into chaos as everybody stands up and starts throwing together their things at once. 

Roy picks up Pauline's books. "What class you got?" he yells over the din. 

"Maths." she yells back. He nods. 

They crowd into the hallway, which is even louder with the clack of girl's heels and boy's boots on the linoleum. Pauline waves to Fanny over the heads of the crowd- she's got Remedial English cause her spelling's so bad.

She and Roy stop outside Maths. He hands her her books. "We goin' to Nicky's after school?" he asks.

She shakes her head. "Nah. I got to be home to do the washing."

"Alright." He leans forward and kisses her on the mouth. His forehead bumps into hers. "See ya tomorrow, then."

She finds her seat and reapplies her lipstick in her compact. It's just as she thought- the heat is making her foundation slide off. Bloody dimestore cosmetics. She pats her face, lips pursed, and checks that her curls aren't relaxing. 

Bloody church fete, she thinks. A whole Sunday wasted to watch some sods bang about on washboards. At least she can dress up.

\----------6 July 1957----------

The fete is bright and windy, decorated liberally with banners and pennants, all flapping wildly. Fanny runs towards her, her red hair blowing. She pulls a strand off her lipstick. "Pauline! You came!"

"Said I would, didn't I?" says Pauline. 

"Ar, you look a picture." Fanny says. 

Pauline's wearing a green print dress and a white pillbox hat, tipped a little over one eye. She's getting as much mileage out of her arched eyebrows as she possibly can. "Ah, thanks, it's nothin'."

Fanny pulls her over to where a group of girls are crowded. "Pauline's here!"

"Ello!" say a few. There's got to be at least fifteen of them. 

"Christ, Fan, you invite the whole school out?" she says. Fanny laughs.

Barbara Keller beckons her over. "You hear Joanne Lennon's playing?"

"Heard somethin' of it." Pauline says.

"Me cousin Kitty told me she got suspended last year for stealin' her headmaster's tobacco." Barbara confides.

"Ar, I heard that too." Helena Merridge says. 

"Why?" says Pauline.

Barbara shrugs. "For a laugh?"

Leona, who's holding her hat on with one hand against the wind, says, "She dress like a man, did you know that?"

"Like a man?" Helena asks.

"Ar."

"Well," says Barbara, "Some women wear pants. Marilyn Monroe wears pants."

"Nah, not capris. Jeans and such. Drainies." Leona says wisely.

Pauline, attempting to piece together an image of her in her head, has her though process interrupted by Roy slinging a heavy arm around her shoulders and pressing a kiss into the side of her head. She jumps a little.

"Got you a jam butty." he says by way of greeting. 

She accepts it. "Ah, cheers."

"Hello, Roy." says Barbara. "How's your brother?"

"Well that he's away from the likes of you." Roy says wickedly.

Barbara fakes offense. "I never. Been a perfect angel all me life and this is what I get."

"Ah, excuse him, he ain't in charge of his faculties, poor dear." says Pauline. She pinches his cheek playfully. Barbara and Helena laugh.

"Bunch a harpies, all a' ye." he says.

"Marvel, en't he- look at him walkin' and talkin' and all..." Pauline continues. She giggles.

He throws his arm off her shoulder and pretends to storm off, but he loops back around. "I'm off with Bert- but I'll see you this evenin'?"

"Ta." she says. He leans in to kiss her, but she ducks. "Ah, lipstick, Roy-"

"Ah." He kisses the side of her head again and lumbers off on his long legs.

Fanny comes stumping over- her heels keep sinking into the muddy ground. "Music's almost starting, Pauly, some I'm gonna head back by the barn to keep Bert and them company-"

"Ah, right-" Almost on cue, a voice rings out. 

"Ladies and gentlemen of Woolton-"

On a truck at the far end of the churchyard, a lone figure is clambering with a guitar.

"Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it's her." says Barbara, giggling.

"I would like to present to you- the, er, Quarrymen."

"Ello one and all." says Joanne dryly, voice crackling over the mic.

She's standing on the back of a parked lorry, gazing over the crowd. And she looks- different. She's got a long, straight nose and thin lidded eyes, and curly hair piled up about her head. She isn't wearing a print dress like the rest of the girls there, but a collared men's shirt and belted corduroys, with a guitar slung around her shoulder. There are two bright spots of colour on her cheeks. Her feet are planted on the truckbed, her chin raised confidently. Her gaze is cool and alert, casting far over Pauline's head at the crowd around her. 

"Look at 'er." says Barbara. "She looks like a dustman."

"Don't she." says Pauline automatically. 

"Great pleasure playing to a crowd such as this," Joanne says, smiling, but with a subtle arch to her brow. Her voice is high, even nasal, but she's talking on a low register. "Quarries and gents, we're the ladymen." she says, gesturing to a pretend band behind her. 

There are a few laughs. Out of the corner of her eye, Pauline can see a few women whispering to each other. 

"Oh, ave I got it wrong?" she says. "Ah, well. Come and Go with Me!" she says, and slams a hand down on her guitar. 

Pauline's seen girl groups before, of course. The Supremes, the Marvelles, and the Ronettes- with their trim ankles and careful in-time steps, slow doo-wop swaying. There's none of this here. 

Joanne's thrashing and jumping around, strumming with as much vigor as she can muster, making up for her lack of skill with movement. She turns the whole thing into a kind of wild dance, rocking rhythmically to the beat of the song, bobbing her head, sending her curly hair flopping. She seems oblivious to the sedate church party around her, her complete misplacedness among the streamers and napkins. 

"I need you, yes I really need you-u," she sings, using her wavering voice to draw out the final notes. "Come and go with me-e-e-e-e." 

There's scattered clapping. Her face is bright from the exertion. "Thank ye." she says again.

"Where' her mother?" says a man off by the tents, quite loudly. 

"Ah, she's up next, sir." says Joanne, smiling. There's a faint chuckle.

"I'm going to speak to the Reverend later." says a woman behind Pauline. "Completely inappropriate."

"Ar." the woman beside her agrees.

Joanne starts on the next one without preamble- Claudette by the Everly Brothers. She moves through a few more numbers- all with the same wild energy. She doesn't do any girl's songs. 

"Thank you folks,' she says finally, quite breathlessly. She laughs, once. "God bless you, every one." 

There's some scattered clapping as she hops off the truckbed and heads off- mostly from the kids. Pauline raises her hands, but Fanny and her group don't, so she holds off.

"Cor." says Barbara. "What a sight."

"She looked like a chicken, her neck bobbing like that." says Helena. 

"She weren't bad-" says Bess from across the gathering. "No, I mean her voice en't bad, if she'd only dress up a bit. She looks like my old man."

"Out there slouchin' around like a drunk by the shipyards." Nan giggles.

Helena tsks. "Feel bad for her ma and da, though. Awful trial, having your girl struttin' around like that."

"Ar." says Barbara sympathetically. "She's headed nowhere good."

"Pauly, you listenin'?" says Heelna.

Pauline blinks. "Oh. Yeah. Ent she strange."

They all nod. 

"Listen- I've got to be headin' home. Me da's be needing someone to cook his dinner."

"Ah." says Helena, smiling gently. "That's all right, Pauly." She puts a hand on Pauline's arm. Pauline's mother's death is well-known, and she is not above using it occasionally.

Joanne is halfway down the block when Pauline catches up with her. She's wheeling her bike, with her guitar slung roung her shoulder. There's a cigarette between her teeth, and her sleeves are rolled up to the elbows.

"Hey there. Joanne." says Pauline. 

Joanne turns, but doesn't stop walking. Her eyes flick over Pauline. 

For a second, she feels suddenly embarrased of her neat green print dress and curled hair- like a little girl in her mother's heels and lipstick. But she shakes it off- she knows this outfit is flattering. She has no reason to feel silly.

"My name's Pauline Mccartney. I wanted t'say- I liked your set." she says.

"Ta." says Joanne, without smiling.

"I thought-" she says, "I thought maybe folks'd prefer you if ye did more girl songs and such, though."

Joanne takes the cig out of her mouth. "Girl songs?"

"Like the Ronettes, the Supremes, you know."

"They play the guitar?" she asks. 

"No-"

"Well then."

She puts the cigarette back in and continues walking. Pauline follows.

"You saw them folks back there," she insists. "They en't used to- your sort of thing."

"Well, then, they'll have to get used to it, won't they?" Joanne says. She throws a leg over her bike. "How'd you do." she says to her, glancing at her again, before pushing off down the street.

Pauline watches her go, her brown hair blowing in the wind over the back of her guitar.


	2. Chapter 2

\---------- 6 July 1957 ----------

Pauline goes home and chucks potatoes and sausages into a pot of boiling water. She shifts from foot to foot as she watches the water bubble, humming. She feels strange, restless, possibly angry. 

"What a prick." she whispers under her breath.

Her father comes home, hangs his coat, and she has his dinner out before he's sat down, as she always does, with a cool pint for him and milk for her.

"Ah, lovely," he says. It isn't, but she appreciates the sentiment. She goes back in the kitchen for her own plate. "Mike here this evening?" he calls.

"No, phoned from Pete's. Practicing their band."

He tucks into his sausages as she sits down. "Ah, right. That skiffle."

"Ta. Seems real excited." she says.

They eat in silence for a bit. Pauline realizes she'd forgotten, for the first time in ages, to salt the potatoes. 

"Mike's birthday is coming up." he says, breaking the quiet. "Since he seems so excited about that skiffle, I thought- why not get him some sort of instrument?"

"He'd like that." says Pauline.

"What sort of instruments they use in skiffle? Drums, harmonica-"

Pauline feels suddenly sharply alert. "They use guitars, don't they?" she asks quietly.

"Guitars." her father says, nodding. "Expensive, though, innit?"

"Some of them aren't bad. Only a few pounds, really." she says. 

"Hmm." he says skeptically.

"And-" she says, carefully, "I wouldn't mind putting in a few quid for it. Seeing as he'd like it so much.'

Lured by the prospect of savings, he nods. "Sweet of you, Pauly." he says. "Why don't we, then." 

That night, she sits in the living room, volume as low as it goes, listening to the radio. Her father and brother are sleeping upstairs, so she has to keep quiet. She doesn't listen to the BBC, like usual- instead, she fiddles with it, as she's seen Mike do, til she gets one of the London stations. 

It's hoarse and crackly, but she can just make it out- the reverberating beats of Twenty Flight Rock. 

She sits there, in the darkened room, ear pressed to the radio, listening to Eddie Cochran's high, punchy voice slide in and out of the static, and she feels like she's standing on the edge of a cliff, high, high in the air, with all of the world under her spread out like a blanket.

\--------- 12 July 1957 ---------

Mike's face lights up when they give him the guitar. It's wrapped in paper, but the shape is unmistakable. 

"Look at that!" he says, tearing the paper off. 

"Gibson Les Paul." says their father proudly. "Picked it up from the store for ye."

"Is it?" Mike asks, delighted. He plucks a string with interest. 

"Don't ask how much it cost." Pauline laughs.

"Cor, the lads'll never get over it." says Mike. "Peter'll have to let me be front man now."

"Front boy, like." she says. Mike shoots her an annoyed look, but is too busy running his fingers over the smooth polish of the body to shoot back a response. 

Pauline clears the dishes off the table and washes the cake crumbs off them while Mike fools with the guitar in the parlor, trying to contort his skinny hands into the correct chord positions. Up to her elbows in warm water, she listens, scrubbing absently.

A twang. "That's C." says Mike, his voice dimmed to a hum by the thin kitchen walls.

"You're meant to be holding your fingers closer, now- look at the diagram." Her father.

"Ah. Right." Another twang. "There."

"Ain't sound like much."

"You have to put it in a song, da." Twang. "I'll learn Cumberland Gap first- that's got C's." Twang.

"Try it without the diagram- there, with me hand over it."

A twang, but a different-sounding one. "Ah, that en't it." Twang. "Damn."

"No swearin', Mike. Try with yer fingers pressing more."

"Hurting me hand, it is."

"Got to practice." He raises his voice. "Oh Pauly, would you bring us a cuppa?"

"Yes, da." Pauline calls. She rinses the dishwater off her hands and fills the kettle. While it boils, she wraps the rest of the cake up to keep it from going stale and sweeps the crumbs off the counter. With the roaring of the kettle, she can't hear their talking anymore.

"There y'are," she says, setting down their tea.

"Lovely." says her father, nose buried in the instructional booklet. "Try D, Mike."

Mike is hunched over the guitar. She can see his wrist trembling with the effort of pressing down on the strings. "Don't rush me, da."

That evening, Mike learns C. Pauline does the dishes, boils six eggs, makes three corned beef sandwiches for their lunches, fixes a button back on Mike's jersey, and darns one of her father's socks.

At nine, her father stands up. "Time for bed then, Mike, Pauline. You can play with the guitar tomorrow."

"I'll just finish this 'fore I head up." Pauline says, hoisting the sock.

"Not too late, mind." he says. He presses an absent kiss on the top of her head and shuffles out. 

Pauline watches Mike and her father stump upstairs, and listens to the creakings of their footsteps above her. She waits until it stops, then waits another twenty minutes to be sure.

When she thinks it's safe, she places her sock down quietly. She takes the guitar, holding it carefully in her arms, and takes it out to the back porch. She opens the back door slowly, slowly, trying not to let the latch creak, and slips out into the chill night air.

She hadn't thought this out- there's barely any light, and it's very cold. But she sits down on the worn wood of the back step, breath fogging and catching the light of the flickering porch lamp. 

She tries to remember how Mike did C- she presses her fingers to the strings and strums. The guitar buzzes discordantly. The pads of her fingers already hurt, and she feels like she's not pressing hard enough- it doesn't sound right. She tries to remember how his fingers looked, and presses them to what she thinks are the right strings. It buzzes again. 

When Joanne did it, it looked effortless. She'd held her guitar so loosely, strumming with a big open hand, not even looking where she was playing. Pauline strums again. It still sounds bad, but not as bad. Her hand aches. Somehow she thought she'd pick it up right away.

She strums again, adjusts one finger, and tries again.

\--------- 15 July 1957 ---------

"Would you sit down, Bert?" Fanny calls. "You're blocking the set."

Bert, who's coming in with Cokes, shuffles awkwardly as he tries to get out of the way in the packed room. They're all at Pauline's, because the Ronettes are gonna be on the Ed Sullivan Show and Pauline has a telly. School's out, it''s midafternoon on a Friday, her father's at work, and everyone is feeling somewhat carefree. "Sorry." he says. "Helena-" He stretches his long teenage boy body over Pauline, who's sitting on the carpet, to hand Helena her drink. Roy reaches up from beside Pauline and punches Bert in the stomach.

"Oof!" Bert says, and fumbles the Coke. It tips over on the floor, and Helena leaps up away from the spreading mess.

"Ye bastard-" says Bert, laughing, reaching for Roy, who scampers out of his way. 

"Fucking hell, Bert!" says Pauline, reaching to the tipped bottle. "Get it-" Helena rights it. 

"Ah, shite, that'll stain." says Helena. 

"You infants!" Fanny shouts from the couch at Bert and Roy. Bert's trying to wrap his arm around Roy's neck to put him in a headlock, but Roy keeps ducking. They don't have much space to move in the crowded room. "Ouch!" says Janet Meyer, as Roy almost steps on her skirt. 

Pauline runs to the kitchen for a dishcloth to blot the stain, and Helena kneels to help her. 

"Would you fucking settle down!" Barbara calls. "It's about to start."

"Roy!" Pauline says. She goes for another dishcloth. Bert is rubbing his knuckles into the crown of Roy's head. 

"I can't fuckin'- this bastard's got me-" he says, laughing.

Just as Pauline's coming back with soap, the doorbell rings. She throws it open, turning back into the parlour. "Come in!"

"Helena here?"

Pauline turns back to see a skinny girl with thick bangs and straight black eyebrows. She's wearing a sweater and a rather dowdy narrow, knee-length cotton skirt. 

"She's in the parlour." says Pauline. "Helena!"

"I'm Georgina Harrison- she invited me-" she says hesitantly. 

"Hello there, Georgina, come on in," she says, never one to deny hospitality. She swings back into the parlour, where Bert has stopped thrashing Roy. 

Helena looks up from the Coke stain. "Georgie! Come on, find a seat."

Georgina looks cagily at the small room, which is packed with knees and elbows. Barbara shuffles over and pats a square foot on the couch next to her.

The Ronettes come on and Fanny shushes everyone into quiet. They do Good Girls and Sweet Sixteen, swaying back and forth in time. Pauline spends most of the time scrubbing. Her father'll murder her if she ruins the carpet.  
She watches their precise steps out of the corner of her eye, their skirts swishing. They're all smiling, and their curls bounce glossily. She wonders if Ed Sullivan would let somebody like Joanne on his show. Probably not.

"Ah, weren't they good." Fanny sighs contentedly when the program's finished. 

"Ta, but I would have liked a bit more-" Roy makes a suggestive gesture. Fanny laughs.

Pauline half pats, half slaps his shoulder next to her. "Save it for the streets, darlin'."

They crowd into the kitchen. Fanny and Barbara have brought pies, and they colonize Pauline's counters, pulling out plates and forks.

She kneels down to gather up the dishtowels. The stain is mostly out, thank goodness. She piles them in her arms, and stands up to see Georgina looking across the parlour.

"'S that a Gibson Les Paul?" she says.

"Is." says Pauline, surprised. "You play?"

Georgina shrugs. "Nah." She steps over to where the guitar is perched on the old radio cabinet. "Can I- though-"

"Yeah, have at it."

Georgina picks it up and strums once. It's not the experimental fiddling of Pauline's experiments- she knows how to hold it. She has the same ease with it she'd noticed on Joanne- a certain way of holding it. 

The sound is still harsh, though. Georgina frowns over it. "Think it's out of tune."

"Oh." says Pauline. "Didn't know they went out of tune."

"Same as any instrument." she says, not looking up from it. "'Ere." She twists one of the little silver key-type things at the end of the neck. She tries again, and it sounds much nicer. 

"Would you look at that." says Pauline. 

Georgina picks out a few chords, plucking them delicately with her long, thin fingers. It's a staccato three-chord melody- Pauline recognizes it. 

"Is that Twenty Flight Rock?"

Georgina looks up, smiling. "Ta." She plucks it again.

"Where'd you learn all that?"

She shrugs again, ducking her head. Georgina bends over the guitar again, twisting a second key. She doesn't have the same relaxed, coolly confident air as Joanne, but she knows what she's doing.

"Could you teach me?" she asks.

Georgina looks up. 

"How to play Twenty Flight Rock and the like-"

"Ah, I don't really know how to- y'know-" Georgina puts the guitar back down.

"Pauline! Come get some pie!" Fanny yells from the kitchen.

"You know some things." Pauline says. "Teach me Twenty Flight Rock, come on, do."

Georgina looks again at the guitar, frowning under her black brows. 

"Fanny! I'm gonna eat your pie if you don't get in here!" Fanny hollers again.

"All right!" she yells. She steps closer to Georgina. "Listen-why don't you come by tomorrow morning and show me Twenty Flight Rock, and maybe how to tune it. Yeah?"

Georgina twitches one shoulder. "S'pose, then."

"Ah, brilliant!" says Pauline, grinning. She turns and clacks back into the kitchen, sweeping aside Roy to dump her dishcloths in the sink. "Fanny- where's my pie-"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made my brother show me how to play his guitar so this would be ~accurate~. cue applause


	3. Chapter 3

\----------30th July 1957---------

"You want popcorn?" Roy shouts across the lobby.

"Ay!" she yells back. "Not too big!"

"Charlie!" yells Janet. "Charlie!"

Her boyfriend, Charlie, turns around.

"Get us some Red Hots!"

"What?"

"Red Hots!"

"What?"

"Ah, t'hell with it." says Janet at normal volume. "Roy! Charlie! We're gonna find seats!"

"What?" yells Roy.

"Seats!" Pauline hollers.

Roy gestures understanding. "Let's split, this place makes my head ache." says Janet at her elbow. The theater lobby is dim and crowded, and sound is bouncing off the low red ceiling and tiled floor, making it too loud to think. The floor is sticky with spilled drinks.

They push into the theater. "Here, here-" says Janet gesturing. 

Pauline throws off her jacket. "Cor. Why'd we have to choose the only theater in the city without air conditioning." The air is warm as car exhaust and totally still.

Janet fans herself. "No money." She sets to arranging her purse over the seat next to her, for Charlie. "Good to see you again, though, Pauly. You've been off with Georgina near every day. "

Pauline shrugs. 

"Odd bird, en't she?" Janet muses. "Real quiet. She en't even got a beau."

"S'pose." says Pauline. 

"What do you to get up to, anyway?" she asks.

Pauline shrugs again. Georgina's taught her Twenty Flight Rock and most of Rave On, so far, and has tuned Mike's guitar and rescrewed the neck straighter. Pauline thinks she mostly like coming for the bits where Pauline makes lunch and Georgina just gets to fool around on the guitar by herself. She's shy, but she knows her way around the thing.

"Where'd you learn all this?" Pauline had asked.

"Used to work in the department store downtown. Me old man did the wiring. I'd tell 'em I was dusting and go down to the instruments and learn off the radio." Georgina said. 

"They ever find you out?"

"Fired me." she said. "Da weren't happy." She grinned dryly.

Georgina can play, but her voice is too creaky for singing. Pauline has hundreds of Sunday School performances under her belt, and has a lovely sweet voice- but neither have figured out how to translate that into rock and roll. Yet.

"Oh, there, it's starting." Janet says.

The theater resolves itself into silence as flickering title cards come up-The Incredible Shrinking Man. It's an American import, very exciting, and the place is packed. No matter that it came out almost five months ago in the States. 

The credits fade out. "The strange, almost incredible story of Robert Scott Carey,' begins a stern male voice, "began on an ordinary summer's day."

There's a commotion from the side of the theater- some scuffling, muffled laughter. A group of boys come pushing in, silhouetted in front of the screen. There's got to be at least eight of them.

"Oh, bloody hell." says Janet. "Teddy Boys. There goes the neighbourhood."

Squinting, Pauline think's she's right. She can see their thin trousers and characteristic duck's-arse quiffs. 

"I know this story better than anyone because I am Robert Scott Carey." continues the movie. The group moves closer to Pauline and Janet.

"Aw shite, don't, don't sit here..." Pauline whispers. Two boys throw themselves down in the seats squarely in front of them. They reek of beer and cigarettes.

"Pass me a light, Dennis." says the boy in front of Janet.

Behind them, a woman goes, "Shhh!" The teddy boys erupt into snickers.

"Oops, Art, better watch your nose, mummy'll put you in the corner." says a lilting voice. 

The movie pans up from a shot of waves to a woman lying on a speedboat, arms behind her head. "This is the way to spend a vacation." she says.

One of the boys hoots rudely. "I'll say." They burst into laughter again.

"Christ." says Pauline. She meant for it to be under her breath, but it mustn't have been, because the boy in front of her turns around.

"'Ello there." he says. "What's eatin' you, Miss Prim?"

Pauline gazes staunchly at him. 

"Pair a' birds having a night out, huh?" he says, glancing to Janet. "Where's yer men, then?"

"In the lobby." says Janet coolly.

The boy next to him turns around too. "Ah, that's what they all say, innit?" he says. 

"Pair a' old maids if I ever saw 'em." says another boy.

"Ah, it ain't their fault- dry as the Sahara, the both of em-" The one in front of Pauline reaches out to tug her skirt. 

She jerks her leg. "Gerroff."

"Ah, don't mind if I do." he says. They laugh.

"Ah, that's Phil's job, though, innit, Art?" says a low, lilting voice at the end of the row. Pauline glances over.

The teddy boy at the end isn't a boy at all- it's Joanne. She's got her hair all flopped up on top of her head and is wearing the same narrow jeans as the rest of them. She's holding a cigarette jauntily between two fingers. 

"Get fucked, Lennon." says Art.

"Ah, I'm saving meself for the Shrinking Man, sorry." she says lightly, nodding up at the screen. "Good of ye t'offer, though."

The boy sputters a response, but as he does Joanne glances upward. She looks directly at Pauline. Even in the dim light of the movie, she can see a playful amusement glinting in her eyes. 

Joanne frowns. Does she remember her?

The boy in front of her pokes her leg. She looks down. "What's your name, then, darlin'?" he says.

She looks back up, trying to ignore him. Joanne's gaze has shifted- she's talking to someone next to her. Pauline's stomach sinks a little- she must not remember her, then.

"Hey." says the boy. "With the eyebrows. What's your name?"

She looks down at him again. "Oh, fuck off back to the duckpond." she snaps. She's suddenly fed up with this whole thing. And where the hell is Roy?

"Simple bleeding question, innit?" the boy says.

"Didn't your mother teach you manners?" she says. Down the row, Joanne looks up again. 

"Ooh, got some spice, don't she?" the boy says.

"Miss Prim's got a mouth on her." Joanne smirks.

Pauline crosses her arms and glances haughtily away.

"Ooh, boys, we made her mad." says one.

"Don't put us in detention, please, miss." says Joanne. "Ah, anything but that."

Pauline looks further away. Why is Joanne on their side? She's angry, but also precariously close to tears.

The boys are hooting. Joanne continues. "Past your bedtimes, loves, it's almost eight, now! Best scurry on home to mummy, oh-" 

Beside her, Janet seemingly decides to try to speak up. "At least-" she says, "At least I've never been laughed off the stage like you- like you were at Woolton."

The mirth slides off Joanne's face. "Whassat?" says Dennis.

Janet pounces on her advantage. "En't you seen her at the Woolton church fete? Reverend Charleson had to apologize to the mums."

"Ay, we just felt bad for her." Pauline says, joining on with vigor. "Embarrassing."

"Thought you said you weren't doing that thing." Dennis says to her.

Joanne glances at him. Her gaze has turned cold and flinty. "Dunno what they's on about." she says.

"She were up all by herself. Real sad." Pauline tsks. Joanne's eyes flick up to her again. 

Art snorts. "Christ, Jo, what happened to 'It's just for a laugh'?"

"Embarrasing, really." says Pauline. "Hurt to watch. Ain't a single person clapped." The boys snicker. Jo is very still. 

Janet tugs Pauline's sleeve. "Pauly. Roy's just comin' in."

But Pauline can't resist getting another dig in. "Like she thought she was Ritchie Valens or someone-"

Joanne bursts up and snatches out at Pauline's hair, yanking her forward. Pauline lurches into Dennis in front of her, thrashing. Janet yells. 

"Bloody hell!" Roy bellows from behind her. He pushes out, and Joanne falls back into the row of seats below, releasing Pauline. She clasps her hands to her scalp and gasps.

"Hey! All you!"

Pauline winces. An usher is looming over them, flashlight glaring. "Get yer sorry arses out!" he booms. 

The night is chilly again, and the sidewalk outside the theater has emptied out. Pauline rubs her scalp morosely- it aches. The teddy boys crowd together, grumbling. 

"Christ." says Roy. "Pauline, y'alright?" He clasps an arm around her. "Here- my jacket-"

She takes it and wraps it around her shoulders. "Fuckin' animals." Roy scowls.

Janet comes out with Charlie, clutching her purse. "Let's just go home, fellas." Charlie says. Janet clasps Pauline's shoulder. "Your hair-" she says, trying to pat it back into shape. 

Joanne is standing somewhat apart from the crowd of muttering teddy boys. She takes a draw from her cigarette and looks at Pauline. Pauline looks back, expressionless.

"Roy- why don't ye go get the car warmed up- I'm gonna talk to her." Pauline says. 

"Pauline!" says Janet, at the same time Roy says "Like hell."

"Don't want a gang a' teddies on your ass, do you? Let me talk to her."

Roy scowls. "A minute, Roy." she pleads.

He sighs. She takes this as a yes.

Joanne is still looking at her. Her hair is mussed too, an her collar's rumpled, but she doesn't seem to care. 

"Hey." says Pauline. "Sorry."

She waits for Joanne to apologize back. She doesn't- she just takes another drag of her cigarette.

She decides to move on. "I play music too." says Pauline.

Joanne arches one eyebrow. "Do you."

"Yeah."

"Me auntie taught me the piano too, Pauly." she says. Pauline blinks at the sound of her name.

"No." she stutters. "Guitar. Twenty Flight Rock and the like." Pauline continues. "Buddy Holly."

Joanne's expression flickers- just briefly. Pauline keeps her gaze steady.

She taps ashes from her cig. "What Buddy Holly?"

Pauline pretends indifference. "A few. Rave On, Peggy Sue. Others. Dunno."

"We're goin' to Pete's, Lennon!" a teddy boy yells.

"Right!" Joanne yells back. "Where you live?"

Pauline folds her arms. "You gonna attack me again?"

"You gonna be a prick again?" Joanne counters.

"Lennon!" yells Dennis.

"Forthlin Road." says Pauline.

Joanne smiles. "Ain't you fancy." She flicks away her cigarette and grinds it under her heel. "Be seein' ya, then." She swings around and dashes down the sidewalk to where her mates are shambling off, her coat flapping. 

Pauline steps carefully on her cigarette- she hadn't put it all the way out. Roy and Janet and Charlie are waiting, Roy hovering protectively by Charlie's car.

They drive her home. Charlie mutters about teddy boys and manners, and Janet keeps patting her hair. Roy presses a kiss onto her and they let her out at home.

Her father is reading the paper. "Hello, there." he says. 

She dumps her things in the hallway. "Hello, da."

"How was the movie?"

"Good, da."

"Mikey learned G today." he says.

She's almost all the way upstairs. "That's great, da."


	4. Chapter 4

\----------4th August 1957---------- 

"Bloody hell." says Pauline.

She's in their tiny dollhouse-size kitchen, up to her elbows in some idiot recipe for a Bakewell tart, and the pastry is just crumbling into pieces in her hands. She's got the kitchen window open for some air, but it's still stifling, and her hair is sticking to the back of her neck. And God knows she can't put the fan on or all the flour all over the counter will blow away in the wind. 

She dumps another quarter cup of cold water in the bowl and mashes. It's still not holding, and she knows there isn't supposed to be this much water in pastry. Her wrists ache from stirring. Her mother could make pastry in ten minutes- she used to keep a lump of it in the fridge and throw together jam tarts before dinner, one, two, three like that. Pauline's made mix cakes for her da's tea for what feels like wees, and she knows she ought to make him something a little nicer- but this is more difficult than she'd thought.

The doorbell rings. "Brilliant." she grumbles. "Who is it?"

Pauline wipes her hands on her apron, muttering, and swings open the door. She stops.

It's Joanne. 

She's got on a grey check shirt and jeans turned up at the ankle, and her hair's all fluffed up. The top button of her shirt's unbuttoned rakishly, and she's got a kerchief tied around her throat, exposing a triangle of pale chest. Her sleeves are rolled up, and her hands are in her pockets, feet planted firmly on Pauline's very own porch.

She had asked where Pauline lived. And Pauline had told her. But somehow she hadn't expected her to just show up at her house.

"Hello." says Joanne.

"Hello." says Pauline. She's suddenly sharply aware of her floury hands, dowdy polka-dot apron. She's wearing a plain yellow housedress with a baggy waist and a hole in the seam, and she's still holding a dishcloth. Next to Joanne, she looks like a grandmother.

"Er." says Pauline. "Come in." She opens the door wider. "I was just making a Bakewell tart."

"Ah." says Joanne noncommittally, gazing around at the house. It feels somehow very strange, having her here. Flustered, she throws puts a cover over the failing dough, almost dropping it in her haste, and gives her hands a quick wash. Then she's faced with the problem of where to put her. 

The parlour's too formal, and the kitchen's too dirty. The porch would do but it's got Mike's bicycle and his soccer net on it. Nothing to be done about it, then- she'll have to take her up to her room.

She take's Mike's guitar from the parlour. "Right." she says. "We'll go up to my room."

Joanne nods, and Pauline squares her shoulders as they creak up the stairs.

"Right." she says again, opening the door.

Her room's wallpapered with a pink and blue pattern of chrysanthemums and ribbon-like scrolls. She's got pink pattered bedspread and sheets, and a little lamp with a ruffled cover. There's a white-painted desk and matching chair, with academic awards stuck up above it like a patchwork. Worst of all, she's got a big poster of Paul Anka. It's a perfect portrait of who she was at fourteen. Normally it doesn't register much with her, but with Joanne in it, she's painfully, grittily aware of how babyish it is. She's expecting a biting, caustic remark- but it never comes. Joanne just looks plainly around, hands in her pockets. 

"Can I get ye somethin'?" Pauline says. 

"I'd love a tea."

Pauline blinks. "All right then." She didn't know what she expected her to ask for- tea feels very ordinary.

When she comes back up with two cups of tea and a plate of biscuits, Joanne is standing, looking at her school awards. The incongruity of Joanne's bizarre, magnetic appearance among Pauline's pencils and teddy bears is almost ridiculous. She looks like an alien come down to earth. 

"Here y'are." she says.

"Ta." says Joanne. "You won six Home Ec awards?"

"Only 'cause nobody else tried." says Pauline.

"Gonna be a housewife, then?" Joanne says, raising one eyebrow.

She stutters. "Well, yeah. What else?"

Joanne shrugs.

"What're you gonna do?"

"Dunno." she says. "Prostitution."

Pauline snorts.

"Ain't no laughin' matter," Joanne says dryly. "I hear you make a regular buck in the vocation."

"You ain't serious."

Joanne smirks. "Play us a song, then."

"Oh, right." Pauline picks up her guitar and sits on her bed, brushing her skirt out. "Er, what should I play?"

Joanne shrugs. She props her shoulder against Pauline's irritatingly pink wall, looking nonchalant. Pauline feels a brief twinge that she hadn't sat on the bed with her- but she brushes it off. 

"Well- Twenty Flight Rock then." she says. It's her best one.

She unties her apron and hangs it from the bedpost. It feels somehow like it's interrupting the whole rock n' roll thing. She wishes she'd changed before Lennon had come over, or had the chance to do her hair a bit better. She shrugs the guitar on, makes a show of plucking thoughtfully at the tuning pegs. Pauline doesn't really know how to tune it- George knows more- but she figures it makes her look more competent. 

Well, here goes. She plucks the quick staccato three-chord opening bars. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one.

"Ooh, well I've got a gal with a record machine. When it comes to rockin', she's the queen-"

She plucks her way meticulously through the song. She doesn't miss a single note, and she gets all the finger positions and speed changes right. She finds herself getting carried away by the simple, rhythmic task, the precision and beat. 

She strums the final note, pleased. She looks up.

Joanne's expression is cool and implacable. But her head is tilted slightly to the side, her eyes narrowed. 

"What else you got?" is all she says. 

"Well- I can do Long Tall Sally-"

"Let's 'ave that one, then."

Pauline adjusts her fingers. 

"Ahem. Long Tall Sally." she says. She strums a hand down, quick. 

The song is faster, jumpier, and very tricky. She stumbles on the notes more than once but tries to make up for it with speed, and with yelling.

"Oh baby, yeah, baby, ooh, baby, some fun tonight! I saw Uncle John with Long Tall Sally, he saw Aunt Mary coming and jumped back in the alley, oh baby-" she hollers. She tries to move her head in that way singers do- smooth and rhythmic but jerky, too, and she bops her upper body back and forth to the beat- but not too much, to keep from throwing off her playing.

"Have some fun, have me some fun tonight, toni-i-ight, yeah!" she says, drawing the end up on a high note. 

She's breathing hard. Joanne is looking at her, really looking, straight at her.

She decides she may as well do another. She stands up, a little closer to Joanne. "Here, then. Good Golly Miss Molly!" she says. She plants her feet wide, and loosens up her shoulders. "Good golly Miss Molly, sure like to ball!"

She tries throwing herself into it like John did, rocking back and forth, really weaving into the song. It's got a simple up-and-down guitar rhythm, but she barely knows it at all. Instead, she pushes into her singing. "You can see Miss Molly rockin' at the house of blue light!" she whoops, almost spitting out the words in effort. 

She finishes. "Whew."

Joanne looks at her. "That's, that's all of them." she says. "But I'm learning others."

Joanne looks at her appraisingly. "Ye decent." she says.

"Decent?" Pauline says. She brushes a sweaty curl off her forehead.

"Ta." she says. "Good pickin'. Stiff, though.'

Actually, Pauline thought her performance had been exceptional. She presses her lips together.

"How was I stiff?" she asks.

Joanne takes a bite of biscuit. "Yer head bobbin', and all tha'."

"Well, I don't think it was stiff."

Joanne shrugs. "Have it your way, then."

Pauline is frustrated. Although the smirking, witty Teddy Girl Joanne had been infuriating, at least Pauline knew what to do with her. She has no idea what to think about this aloof, disaffected cold fish. And she did think her movement was good- she's been practicing it in the mirror, trying to do it like Little RIchard really did. But she can't just flat-out tell Joanne she's wrong- that's rude.

"On Long Tall Sally- ye got a lyric off, too. Ye said 'she's pretty tricksy', not 'she's built for speed'."

This is a bit rich. "When you did Come and Go with Me, you en't have all the lyrics right, neither." she points out.

"Was improvisation, not mistakes. That were on purpose." Joanne says without missing a beat.

"How's it when I do it, it's mistakes, but when you do it, it's improvisation?"

Joanne smiles wryly. "Ah, 'cause I'm better, see."

Pauline rises to the jab. "Well," she says in an exaggerated posh accent. "Beg to disagree, Mrs Lennon."

"Aw, Miss Lennon thinks herself smart." Joanne says, in a twisty, Cockneyish way. 

She feels more sure-footed among this version of Joanne. "Knows it, Mrs Lennon." she says, lifting her chin imperiously.

"Don't you look just like the Queen Mam," says Joanne, and laughs- a real, open-mouthed laugh that shows all of her teeth. 

Joanne's coldness is gone, and Pauline feels immensely, ridiculously, relieved. "Imagine her singing Little Richard." 

"Do a fair shakes better than you." Joanne says craftily. 

Pauline scoffs. "All I ever seen you play is the wrong lyrics with banjo chords on a guitar- dunno what you're goin' on about."

Joanne closes her mouth. Just like that, her amusement evaporates. "Dunno why you're up here showin' off if I'm no good meself."

And in the space of a second Pauline's thrown. She'd thought she'd cracked her open, but she's closed up again.

"I en't mean you weren't good-" she says hastily.

"Said as much, didn't ye?" 

"Listen," she says, "You en't really bad. I can teach you Long Tall Sally, Little Richard, all of that-"

"Was doing fine on me own, please and thank ye." Joanne gets up and moves for the door.

"You en't, though." Joanne turns around, but before she can say anything, Pauline says, "We could be a girl group. Like the Ronettes."

"Ronettes ain't got guitars."

"No." Pauline says. "We'd be the first."

Joanne doesn't look particularly convinced. "No girl groups with just two."

"I know another girl who can play."

Joanne turns back and heads down the stairs. Pauline follows.

"Why'd you start a group called the Quarrymen if you didn't want more members?" she insists.

"It was a bleedin' joke."

"Listen, we could be like- the Crickets, but girls. Bet people'd pay to see that."

Joanne, reaching the last step of the stairs, pauses, her hand on the banister. 

Pauline's got her. "The Crickettes." she says, emphasising the last syllable wryly.

Her eyes meet Pauline, and she thinks she sees a glimmer of careful interest. Or maybe she imagined it.

Then she frowns. "Did ye turn off the stove?"

"Oh, shit!" She dashes into the kitchen.

The butter on the stove's sizzled away and is hissing and smoking angrily. She snaps off the heat and launches the pan into the sink. Even still, she can smell the burnt butter hanging in the air. Frustrated, she flaps her dish towel at it. Fucking Bakewell tart.

When she goes back to the front door, it's open and Joanne's gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have any of yall seen sing street??? such strong early beatles vibes, my god. watch it its on netflix


	5. Chapter 5

\--------- 20th August 1957----------

Pauline doesn't see Joanne for two weeks.

Considering a month ago she'd never met her, and every one of the three times they had met Joanne had been aloof, rude, or downright violent, this shouldn't bother her. But it does. 

It really does.

"You've got your fingering off again."

"Hm? Oh." She adjusts them.

"It's still off. That's a C, you want a G."

She changes them again.

Georgie looks at her carefully. "Y'alright, then?"

They're sitting in Georgie's bathroom. It's tiny, boxlike, with a high ceiling that needs painting, but the tiling is apparently makes for good acoustics. Pauline is sitting crosslegged in the bathtub, and Georgie is perched on the toilet, the window cracked so she can smoke. Georgie smokes in a persistent, begrudging way, like she's practicing for a test in a subject she hates. She's fourteen, and looks it, and she knows, but is doing her dutiful best to be older. Pauline thinks maybe a better tactic would be investing in a skirt that didn't look like it had seen the beaches of Normandy, but when she suggested this Georgie had said she was saving up for a guitar and had refused to discuss it any further. 

Pauline wiggles. The faucet is pressing into her back. "Why wouldn't she see me?"

Georgie sighs.

"I was just as good as her. Better, even."

"Dunno, Pauly." She taps her cigarette in the sink.

"I offered to teach her, and everything."

"If yer not gonna play, can I take the guitar?"

Pauline shrugs the strap off and passes it to her, and Georgie puts out her cigarette in the sink to take it. 

"We coulda been a girl group, but a band. Like a cross between the Crickets and the Ronettes."

Georgie plucks each of the strings in her precise, laser-focused way, checking the sound. She strums once, and then begins to slowly pick out the first four chords of Raunchy- A, D, A, D. 

"Ain't no girl groups who play their own music. Woulda been all unique, like. A novelty act, but good."

"There's Sister Rosetta Tharpe." Georgie says, still picking out the same four chords.

Pauline's train of thought pauses. "Who?"

"Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She played guitar. Gospel music and like."

"Oh. Was she in a group?"

"No, solo."

"Oh, well then." She continues on. "She came over to my house and all. Why'd she come over if she din't want me around?"

A, D, A, D. "Maybe she's shy."

Pauline scoffs. "Nah. She en't like that." She remembers the way Joanne had moved, the way she'd leaned against her wall- with purpose, but relaxed too, with an easy confidence Pauline could never quite imitate. Like a man, almost- with her shoulders squared, her feet apart. She took up space in a kind of bold-faced, forceful way- not aggressive, but like she took it for granted you'd find room for her. Someone who was used to being listened to. "There's somethin' else."

Georgie moves into the next set of chords. A, A, A, D. A, A, A, D. "Maybe she en't interested in guitars."

Pauline rejects this too. "She performed at the fete all on her own. If she en't serious she wouldn't 'ave done that."

Georgie plays two more sets of chords. She's far off in guitar-land, mostly listening to the buzz of the strings, checking for inconsistencies. "Maybe she en't like you."

Pauline frowns. "Why wouldn't she like me?"

She shrugs.

Pauline, in truth, has met very few people in her life who didn't like her. She has a delicate, doe-eyed look and careful refined manners. She's attractive but not intimidatingly so, and has cultivated a careful demure-but-not-too-demure appearance that allows her to walk the line pretty well between popularity with her teachers and with kids her own age. Everyone likes her. But perhaps Joanne hadn't. 

"I dunno." she says, still considering this. She tugs on her necklace in thought, running her thumbnail over each of the pearls.

Voice distant, Georgie says, "Or maybe she thought you were better than 'er."

"Well, I was."

See shrugs noncommittally. "Might not want competition."

Pauline blinks. This hadn't occurred to her. Joanne always seemed so sure of herself. The way she carried herself, the way she spoke- like she didn't care about anyone else. 

But when Janet had brought up her crashing and burning at the fete, she'd gotten angry. And she hadn't liked it when Pauline had joked about being better than her either. 

"She was playin' banjo chords at the fete." Pauline says, remembering this.

Georgie looks up. "Banjo chords?" she says, smirking slightly in amusement.

Pauline nods. "I en't notice at first, but I realized it later. After I learned real ones."

Georgie chuckles lightly. "Cor. She en't have a clue what she's doin'."

She frowns. "Yeah." she says slowly.

"Were only one bird with a guitar in Liverpool before you came along. Now there's three." Georgie punctuates this with a finely-tuned strum.

This is a new angle to Joanne she hadn't seen before. That she might be jealous, or unsure of her place. She's not sure if she likes this- she'd been enamored by cool, rebellious, independent Joanne Lennon; she hadn't considered that she might have shortcomings- she might be insecure.

Maybe she sees Pauline as a threat. Coming to usurp her. She turns this over carefully in her mind, inspecting it. 

Georgie goes back to the first four chords, taking advantage of Pauline's silence to get another round in. A, D, A, D.

If Joanne feels threatened by her- it means Pauline is better than her, definitely. And she knows it. Pauline is prettier, more acceptable, more straightforwardly likeable. She's more talented- she can play Ritchie Valens and Little Richard. And she has a better singing voice. 

She looks back at Georgie, who's playing the two sets in sequence now, very slowly. Her long, thin fingers move probingly over the strings, plucking each one with specific, precise intent.

Georgie is a better player, though. She doesn't have much skill as a performer, and little charisma, but she's only fourteen and she's playing way above Pauline's skill level.

"Georgie-" she says. 

She glances up, surfacing. "Mm?"

"How much is the guitar you want?"

"Dutch Egmond flat top acoustic. Three pound ten." she answers immediately.

"How much you got?"

Georgie blinks. "Er. Two pound six."

Shit. "I've got fifty. We're short fifty-four pence."

"We?" Georgie says slowly. She's stopped playing.

She purses her lips. Mike's only got twenty pence and he'd never let her borrow it. Her da's so cheap, he wouldn't lend her anything either. And her aunt's all the way out in Bristol, she can't beg it off her. She reaches up to tug her necklace.

And then she has a thought.

"Georgie." She unclasps her pearls. "How much d'you think this'd go for?"

Georgie looks at it cautiously. "Dunno. Why- what's goin' on?"

She smiles. "We're gonna buy you a guitar."

 

\--------------------------

Georgie is pink-faced and smiling, in a bewildered kind of way, when they exit the shop. She keeps showing her teeth in a wide-open, startled grin, then pressing her lips back together again, as if she's scared to be too happy in case someone shows up to revoke it. She's got both arms wrapped around the guitar case, holding it to her chest, as if she's scared someone will steal it. With her skinny frame, the guitar looks almost comically outsized- like a child someone's given a too-large new toy. They head back down the street to Pauline's house, and though it's kind of interrupting her ability to walk, she keeps holding it in front of her, gripping it possessively.

"What should we call ourselves?" says Pauline. "We need a good name. "

"I dunno." says Georgie breathlessly.

"Somethin' related to the guitars, 'cause that'll be our sort of thing, y'know. The Chordettes?"

"Dunno." she says again.

"No, I think that's taken. What about the Frets- the Frets Sisters?"

"Sure." Georgie says, not paying attention.

"Nah, sounds like we're a pair a' worriers." Pauline reaches up to fiddle with her necklace, before realizing it's gone. She felt a little sad about pawning it- it had been a fifteenth birthday present from her aunt. But it was worth it. Now that Georgie had her own guitar, they could really go places. And if they got Joanne on their side- well.

"The Octave Sisters. The Treble Clefs. The Trebles. The Treblettes?" She snaps her fingers. "The Trebelles!"

"Sure, sounds grand." says Georgie.

"The Trebelles." she says declaratively. "Brilliant. We'd better get real good at playing duets.'

Georgie hefts her guitar. "Yeah, all right." she says, grinning, not really caring.


	6. Chapter 6

They get real good at playing duets.

Georgie and Pauly settle into a comfortable rhythm. Pauline wakes up, tries to remove the rollers from her hair without snagging (always impossible), and pats on powder and lipstick. She cinches her skirt on and chooses a tight-but-not-too-tight jumper in a matching colour. She ties on her apron, lights the stove, and poaches five eggs, two for her father, two for her brother, and one for her, and fries up a pan of bacon and makes a stack of toast. She eats her egg and watches her father read the paper and Mike shovel twelve hundred calories of bacon and toast into his mouth (how he stays skinny she wish she knew). She clears the dishes and waits, waits, for them to leave, and after Mike has found two matching socks and her father has spent what seems like hours adjusting his clock to the same time as the old wall clock in the dining room, she gives them their lunches, wrapped in wax paper, and they finally tramp off the porch for the bus. She waves them goodbye from the doorway, curls bouncing, apron on, perfect little mother. 

Then, as soon as they've rounded the block, she sprints for the phone. Georgie picks up on the first ring. "Pauly?" she says. "Yep." she responds. 

Georgie arrives ten minutes later on her porch, looking windswept and a little sweaty, bringing a guitar and Pauline's life with her. 

They hunch in her bathroom until their backs ache and their fingers sting, practicing, practicing, rotating through Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, Ritchie Valens, the Isley Brothers. Her fingers harden with callouses and her once neatly trimmed nails chip and crack, but she doesn't care. Pauline fiddles with the radio, trying to bring up the crackly, elusive Radio Luxembourg, and they scribble down the lyrics of all the big American hits, trying to sift the notes out of the static. Georgie has a knack for it- her dark eyes flick over the paper, scribbling down A, G, C, in time with the rapid strummings of Jerry Lee Lewis. They practice their rhythm and perform to invisible crowds, bobbing their heads and grinning, jerking their guitars like rearing horses. Pauline tries to relax her shoulders and move her feet more , Joanne's live-wire looseness permanently inhabiting the back of her mind.

Roy calls twice a day, sometimes more, and Barbara and Fanny too. She picks up, every time, and makes excuses- she's got to clean, she isn't feeling well, she's busy with housework, her da needs her, she's on her monthlies (the last excuse is only for Barbara and Fanny). 

"Cor." says Fanny on the phone. "I en't ever know you to be so busy round the house."

Georgie is hunched in the corner, twisting the dials on the radio. She cranes her neck around, trying to listen better. "Well, it's real tough after me ma died, y'know."

"Aw, poor dear." Fanny tsks.

"Up next," crackles the announcer. "The hit that's sweeping the nation, Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock!"

Georgie snaps up, grabbing for the notepad. "Pauly!" she hisses.

Pauline covers the receiver. "I know, I know!"

"Real good of you to take all of it on, all on your lonesome-" Fanny continues.

"Yeah, Fan. Oh, er, the pot's boiling over, sorry, got to go."

"Pauly-" Fanny says, but Pauline's cut her off. The first notes are just starting, and she sprawls beside Georgie, who passes her a pen and paper without looking at her, focused on the radio.

She bobs her head in time with the music as her hand twitches over the paper. Jailhouse Rock is a rare, lucky find- it isn't even out in England yet. The energy, the electricity contained in his hoarse, brash voice is thrilling, in a way she can't quite find words for. She hasn't felt inclined to listen to her Paul Anka or Marcie Blane records in ages- not that they're bad, but how could anything compare to this? Their sweet, syrupy, doo-wop voices, once so pleasantly enjoyable- they seem so drowsy and grandmotherly, compared to this. She can't drive, but she wishes she could, just to tear down the highway, music pumping, like they do in America. In a cherry-red convertible, on those long, sun-scorched, impossibly straight roads, hair blowing in the wind, just going forever, a hundred miles an hour. Here it rains all the time and all the cars look like they're made out of tin left over from the First World War. 

The song fades away, sinking back into static. "What'd you get?" Georgie says. 

She looks down. "Got a decent amount. Missed the middle chunk, though."

She nods. "Think I've got the right notes for the first bit, at least. We could start there. It might come on again and we can get the rest of it."

She nods. "Right."

They fuss over Jailhouse Rock for hours. Pauline tries to get her voice a little rough, like Elvis's. Georgie plays the first two notes, and she starts. "The warden threw a party in the county jail, the prison band was there and- Wait, no."

She leans back and clears her throat.

Georgie rests her chin on her guitar, watching her with amusement. "What're you doing?"

"Trying to- ach- work up a hoarse voice." She coughs forcefully, and tries tipping her head back to work up more spit. It's horribly unladylike, and Georgie snorts.

"You look like some old biddy sittin' out by a pub." she says, grinning in her wolfish way.

"Shove it up your- hrrrch- arse."

Georgie laughs.

At four fifty-five, Georgie straps her guitar carefully on, still holding it like it's made of fine china, and leaves out the back door, and Pauline replaces Mike's guitar in the parlour. At five, her da comes home, sits down heavily in his armchair, and says "Ah, dear me." Pauline brings him a hot cup of tea, which she doesn't know how he stands, in this heat, and a slice of cake. Mike comes home an hour later and she brings him the same. She boils some sort of nondescript dinner, and they eat in silence. She clears the dishes and tidies the kitchen, and Mike listens to records, while her da reads his book and tells him to "turn it down, just a bit, Mike dear". She scrubs down the pots from dinner and thinks about her red convertible, with her lipstick to match, and the Trebelles, the Liverpudlian girl group that's sweeping the American airwaves with their unprecedented success. She and Georgie and maybe Joanne, their voices buzzing over the airwaves, their smiling faces and shiny hair flickering in black-and-white on the telly, standing two or maybe three in a row onstage, palm trees and clear blue sky overhead.

Then she makes two corned beef sandwiches and wraps them in paper for their lunches, and rolls up her sleeves to scrub the grime out of Mike's work clothes in the kitchen sink, and after that she should probably dust the bookshelves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i should clarify- this is set in the fifties, and the characters, including pauline, might have views or do things that are in accordance with the sexist culture of the era. this doesn't mean i'm endorsing these things- they'd just be normal to the characters, so i'm presenting them as such.
> 
> also: 10k whoop whoop


	7. Chapter 7

"No, no- it should be faster."

Georgie strums faster. 

"No- no not that fast. See, it goes 'rave on-it's-a-crazy-feeling, so one-two-three-four-five at the same time-"

"It en't one-two-three-four-five, there's only four beats there-"

"No, no, it were five, see-" she tries to strum it, frustrated.

The doorbell rings. She pauses. "Who the hell's that?"

She feels all the blood rush to her head. What if it's Lennon, is her first thought. She puts her guitar down, a little less gently than she might have, and thumps down the stairs, Georgie following. Through the frosted glass window by the door, she can see a tall, dark-clothed figure- it's Lennon, it's Lennon.

She throws open the door.

It's Roy. "Hello." he says.

"Oh." she says. "Hello."

Georgie pokes her head up behind her.

"Hey, Georgina." he says.

"Hello." she says.

Roy shuffles a little. "D'you- Bess's having a do over at her place in an hour, d'you want to come?"

Pauline hesitates. "Er. I got cleaning, Roy, sorry-"

"Pauline, I en't seen you in two weeks." Roy huffs. 

She shifts a little. "It en't been that long, Roy- we went to Marcie's-"

"That was last month. Everytime I call, you say you got cleanin'."

Georgie, smelling trouble, says, "I might have a cuppa," and disappears.

"The hell are you up to?" he says.

Music, she should say. Practicing. It's the truth. But somehow she doesn't want to. It's something she has for herself, for her and Georgie -and Joanne- something that she's doing because she likes it and she wants to. If Roy knew- if he knew, it would be his too, and then it would be Janet and Barbara, and Fanny's, and eventually Mike's and her da's. Of course they'd be supportive- they might even think it was cool. But then they'd all have their fingers in it, and it would just pull apart like taffy, pulling and stretching till it was thin as a sheet and paltry and watered-down, until there was nothing left. 

"I said. Housework." she says, meeting his eyes.

He gives her a long look. "Come to Bess's." he says.

She sighs. She can't tell him no, not now. "All right."

He sits in the living room while she does her makeup. Because Georgie was there, he's obliged to invite her too, and she stands by the mirror, wincing, while Pauline puts lipstick on her. It's like trying to put a doll's dress on a cat.

"Hold still," she says.

Georgie cringes away. "Eugh. It's sticky."

"That's why it's called lip-stick, ye great buffoon. Look, now it's smudged."

Pauline slices up vegetables and roast and puts them in the fridge with a note, and instructions for turning the oven on. By the time she's arranged them on two plates and covered them with foil, Roy is standing on the porch, pacing.

He drives them there in his car, and Pauline cranks the windows, even though it'll muss her hair. Dennis Brown threw up in it five months ago after Roy took too many sharp turns, and it still reeks.

"Pauline!" Fanny calls as Roy parks, waving like it's been years since she's seen her instead of weeks. Roy opens the door for her, and as soon as she's stepped out, Pauline is engulfed in a hug.

"Ah, good t'see you- it's been ages, Pauly."

"Ah, yeah, missed ye, Fanny." she says, hoping she sounds convincing.

Bess's house is bustling. Apparently, as Fanny narrates to her as they climb her front steps, her folks are off at Butlins, and she's taking advantage of their parental neglect to have 'some people' over. Kids are streaming up the stairs into her front door, and Bess is standing in the middle of the swarm, wearing lipstick bright enough to flag down a taxi, talking a mile a minute.

Georgie looks around in that cornered-animal way she gets at large gatherings. Pauline tugs her upper arm, preventing her from fleeing. There's a general clustering of people in the living room, and she tries to move in that direction, pushing through people's backs. Pauline can hear music reverberating through the walls with talk and clamour mixing through it, coursing over the bass notes like water over rocks. 

All the furniture's been moved out of the living room and dining room and people with girlfriends or boyfriends are dancing in the middle, while people without stand, holding drinks, at the walls. Some doo-wop music with a rabbity-fast percussion beat has been put on, and the bare wood floor is crowded with sweaty, stamping feet. The air is warm and faintly humming with energy.

Georgie slides for the wall, but Pauline clamps her hand around her wrist. "No ye en't."

"I ain't have anyone to dance with, anyway."

"We'll get someone to ask you, come on-"

Georgie raises her eyebrows at her dryly. It's true- Georgie hasn't had time to go home and change, and is wearing one of her two skirts and an old droopy shirt of her sister's with the cornered shoulders popular six years ago. Her hair is limp- there wasn't time to style it. She purses her lips, and is about to plan an appropriately authentic yet polite response, when Roy's hand plants itself on the small of her back. 

"Thought I'd lost ye." he says directly into her ear.

"Ah, there y'are." she says, despite not having looked for him.

He's hooked her by the waist and is pulling her onto the dance floor. "Come on, let's have us a dance."

"All right- just-" She casts a glance to Georgie, who is backing up to the wall as if magnetized. She makes a shrugging, 'go on, don't worry about me' gesture, and soon the crowd's folded over her and Pauline can't see her.

The music changes, and the first few notes of At The Hop by Danny and the Juniors begins. There's a general cheer, which resolves into energetic shuffling dances.

Roy takes her hand and they spiral onto the dance floor. She tries to loosen up, get into the song, feet wiggling back on the floor, heel and toe back and forth, her skirt whirling around her legs. It's tight, and she's jostling against other people, dresses flouncing and limbs whirling. she's so focused on trying not to step on anyone that she doesn't hear Roy at first.

"What?" she says.

"I said, how 'ave you been?" he shouts.

"Oh. Good." she shouts back.

He nods. "'Been a while."

She smiles, guiltily. "Yeah."

He takes her other hand and she twists back on her heel in the other direction. I should be nicer, she thinks. 

"How were you?" she asks

"Good." he says normally. Perhaps it's resolved. 

"Right."

"Got a job at the packing plant."

"Oh, ent that nice."

"Yeah. Were last week. Would've told you, but you wouldn't talk to me." It is not resolved.

The song ends, and everyone claps. He releases her hand from his to join in. 

"I talked, didn't I? We talked last week, just." she says, taking advantage of the break.

"Were for about a minute-" he begins, before Eric Yardsley, an aggressively friendly boy with a face the colour of raw steak, appears from nowhere and throws a large, sweaty trunk of an arm around his shoulders.

"Roy!" he yells as a greeting. He looks at her. "Pauline!"

"Hello." she says.

"Fuckin good for you, Roy! What a kick!" he says, clapping him meatily on the shoulder. "Art school!"

Pauline frowns. 

Roy, looking into her eyes, says, "I got into the Liverpool College of Art, also."

"Do fuckin' paintings and shit!" Eric says, a step behind in the conversation.

"Congratulations." she says. She means it, she does. And she feels genuinely bad for the first time.

Eric follows Roy's gaze over to Pauline like a tug chugging from one harbour to the next. "You en't hear?"

Pauline pinches her lips together. "Shit," Eric is continuing, "that were like a week ago! Everybody knows."

"You're real good at lettering." she says. "That's fantastic, Roy."

"A fuckin' kick." Eric says, not really addressing anyone. He swivels back over to Roy. "And it en't matter if that bint Lennon got in on money- you know shit, you did shit-"

Everybody in Pauline's peripheral vision disappears. "Lennon?"

She watches Eric manually focus his eyes on her. "That bint Lennon failed all her O-levels but just cause she got money she got in- not our boy, Roy knows it-"

"She going to the College of Art?"

"S'right."

"She got money?"

"Yeah, no foolin'. Aunt got bread."

"Where does she live?"

Eric looks inside his forehead. "Aah- Out near Woolton. Menlove. Big house. Dunno. Why?"

Of course it would be out by Woolton. She's such an idiot- why didn't she think of that?

"D'you know what house?"

He looks blank. "No. Why-"

Roy tugs her. "Hey- c'mon, it's Marcie Blane."

Someone behind them shouts, and Eric, released, wheels off to the source of the sound. Around them, everyone is shuffling earnestly. The song is already at least halfway through. 

"Oh, right." He takes her hands again and she slides easily into the back-and-forth rhythm. This song is more doo-wop, requiring less vigor.

A rich kid. Joanne's rich. She'd never have pegged her for one- in fact, she looked more like the rough kids from the Dingle, with her scuffed boots and foul mouth. But then, where'd a Dingle kid get a guitar? She tries to work this new information into her present image of her. 

Oh, Roy is talking to her. She missed it again. 

"Yeah." she smiles.

"Hardest part is waking up early. It's at five, and it's bloody murder." he continues, puffing a little from the dancing.

"Oh." And she failed her exams, that too, and she's going to the Liverpool College of Art. The failure- well, she could have guessed that. Imagine her studying. But what about art school? She supposes music is artistic- maybe that extends to other areas as well. 

"All it is is loading up the trucks in the warehouse out by the Kentworth plant, but it's right difficult. Breaks yer back, y'know."

"Oh no." And she got in despite failing. Because she's rich. That leaves a bad taste in her mouth, a bit. Paid her way in, not proper hard work. But Joanne doesn't seem the type to work hard. Maybe it was her folks that paid her in and she wasn't in on it. 

"We gotta load a truck every fifteen minutes and we en't get breaks until all the trucks are loaded. Me first day, right thought I'd die. Didn't get em done till half past nine. Boss weren't happy."

"Really." That's likely it. Joanne would never be some spoilt rich kid demanding admission for no work- no, she probably wanted to go into music but her folks are forcing her. That makes sense. She en't seem like much of a painter.

"I'm right good at it now, though. Can do ''em in twelve, sometimes ten. Yesterday, I loaded one up in eight and a half. Boss said he en't seen someone my age ever do one that fast. But the hardest part is to keep the bottles from breaking, cause all the jostling gets 'em."

"Mm." If she's going even though she don't want to, just to please her folks- well, that's sweet, really. She acts tough, but really she's a nice girl, inside. This is a new side to her, and Pauline is pleased to have discovered it. She can imagine her at home with her ma and da. She wonders what they think of the pants.

"I busted a bottle last week, and it ran all along the floor of the truck and down into the warehouse, and Larry near slipped, but-" He's drowned out by a wave of clapping. The song has just ended.

She's free. She claps along with everybody else. "Well, that was real fine, Roy." She turns to go.

He follows her out of the living room. "Pauline- you en't leaving already."

Where's Georgie? She scans the hallway, which is lined up and down with people, the ceiling nearly lost in a blue fog of cigarette smoke. "Me da be missin' me- I better get home."

He tries to pull her closer. "He can go without you for one night."

"I en't say where I was going, he'll be worried. C'mon, Roy-" She spots Georgie, who's sipping distastefully at a drink. "Hey!" she says, gesturing. Georgie meets her eyes gratefully and pushes over. 

"Pauline!" says Roy loudly.

She turns around. The crowds in the hallway glance over. She can see, out of the corner of her eye, Fanny swooping over. Like a moth to a fight.

Roy looks a bit surprised at his own forcefulness. "Pauline," he says again. "You- I en't seen you in two weeks- you been here all of twenty minutes. It's en't even dark out."

"I gotta get home to my da." she says quietly.

Roy rubs his eyebrow. "That's- I know that en't really it, Pauline. Just- tell me what's goin' on."

She presses her lips together, keenly aware of the eyes lining the hallway. 

He swallows. "Are you- are you cheating on me?"

Fanny gasps from behind her. Pauline's vague guilt vanishes. She straightens her shoulders. "If that's- well, if that's where your mind's goin' first, I dunno why you stuck with me if that's what you think of me- I wouldn't-"

She snaps her mouth shut and jerks her chin up sharply. Emanating righteous offense, she turns on her heel and sweeps down the hallway, people clearing out of her way. Georgie follows, stumbling behind her. 

She strides down the lawn, which is strewn with bikes. Down past the gate, more cars are jostling for space, headlights flashing in the evening dim.

"Hey-" says Georgie. 

She turns around. Georgie frowns. "Er- are ye alright?"

She pats her hair, shakes the tension out of her shoulders. "Fine, fine."

Georgie pats her shoulder gingerly. "Bastard." she says gently.

"Yeah." She tries to shrug it off, but putting her in the spot in front of half of Liverpool- "Come on, we're going to Woolton." 

Pauline starts down the steps, heels clicking purposefully. Georgie follows, blinking. "Woolton- why? Wait- it isn't-"

"We'd better go back to mine for our guitars, too."

"Joanne. Bloody hell." Georgie groans. 

.

Pauline ignores this. "It's only a fifteen minute walk," she declares.

When she jostles open the door at Forthlin Road, Mikey glances into the hallway. "I thought you was sleeping at Helena's."

"Yup." She stomps up the stairs.

"There's someone's guitar in the loo." says Mikey after her.

"I know." she calls. She comes down again with both instruments, thrusting Georgie's at her, where she's still hovering in the doorway. She throws the strap of hers over her shoulder.

"That's my guitar." says Mikey.

"Yup." she says. She's out the door and down the step before he can protest.

The bus takes the approximate length of the Cretaceous period to arrive. Pauline spends the time tapping her heel against the crumbling pavement, click-click-click, or striding back and forth. Georgie spends the time watching her.

The bus pulls up, hissing and whooshing like an overworked dinosaur. Pauline tries to practice, but her fingers fumble. The houses tick past, getting progressively nicer, larger, better painted. The streets widen, and the trees look healthier. 

"Where the hell does she live?" Georgie asks, watching the tidy expanses of lush green lawn, visible from the streetlights, sweep by.

Pauline fumbles the opening notes of Rave On for the third time. "Told you she was loaded."

"Menlove Avenue." calls the driver. Pauline feels her heart turn to water. She stands to get up, hefting her guitar, suddenly very conscious of each step her feet take, down the bus stairs and out onto the pavement. She's going to see her. 

The bus pulls out, leaving them alone on the curb in the dark. The sky is flat and black and the streetlights are lit. Pauline looks down at the rows of tidy houses and neat gardens.

"Which house is it?" says Georgie.

"Er." says Pauline.

"Bloody hell." says Georgie disbelievingly.

They start at the nearest house. Pauline knocks, Georgie lurking anxiously behind her. 

A short, doughy-looking man answers. She puts on her best Girl Scout smile, the one she uses with teachers. "Hello," she says. "I'm looking for Joanne Lennon-"

"She en't live here." he says suspiciously.

"Do you know where she lives?"

"Down with Ms. Smith." he says. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going back to bed."

"Where does-"

He slams the door.

She slumps her shoulders. "Right."

"Hello!" she says, the next house down. "Does Joanne Lennon live-"

"Oh no, not her again. Don't involve me in this." says the old woman in the doorway. 

"But if you would just-"

"Leave me out of it." Slam.

The next house has a garden littered with rusting bikes and dolls. A dollhouse is leaned on it's side next to the door, looking vaguely abandoned.

"Hello!" she says. "Oh, hello, darling."

"'Ello." says the small, pajama-clad child at the door, staring at them with a blank look.

"Does Joanne Lennon live here?"

"No."

"Okay, do you know where she lives, then?"

"No."

"Okay, does your ma or da know-"

"I'm Janice." 

"That's nice. Can you get your ma-"

"I'm five."

"Great. Does-"

From somewhere inside, a voice calls, "Janice! Ye should be in bed!" 

The girl looks back into the house. "Okay. Bye." she says, struggling the door closed.

"No- if you could just-" But it's shut.

Four houses later, they're no closer. Pauline's getting chilly, and Georgie is on her last cigarette.

"We oughter go home, Pauly. It's past eleven, she'll be in bed."

Pauline looks down the dark, shuttered street. She shivers. "One more."

"The 157 bus leaves in two minutes."

She bites her lip. In her mind, she releases her grip on Joanne. "All right."

Georgie slumps in exaggerated relief. "About bleedin' time, my God."

"Ah, come off it."

The 157 is welcomingly warm and light, and totally empty. Pauline dumps the last of her change in the meter, knowing the driver won't refuse two girls so late at night, no matter how little they play. They shack up in the far back corner on the top of the bus, holding their guitars protectively on her laps. She realizes she's tired.

"We'll find her tomorrow, if ye like." says Georgie.

She shrugs. "Yeah."

Georgie twangs her guitar thoughtfully. "Tomorrow-" she says. She lifts her voice. "That'll be the day-"

She rolls her eyes. "No, Georgie, no-"

"When you say goodbye, oh, that'll be the day, when you make me cry-y-y-" she creaks insistently.

Pauline groans, laughing. "No, don't sing-"

"You say you're gonna leave-" Georgie looks up at her, prompting.

"Nooo-"

"You say you're gonna leave-" she insists. "Come on, or I'll keep singin- You say you're gonna leave-"

Pauline, begrudgingly, lifts her voice too. "You know it's a lie, cause-"

"That'll be the day-ay-at when I die." she says, strumming in time. "Altogether now, boys and girls."

Pauline laughs. She settles back into the song, swaying with the bus's jostling. "You give me all your loving, and your turtle doving, all your hugs and kisses, and your money too." She raises her voice over the engine, "Well, you know you love me baby, yet you still tell me maybe, that some day well-"

"I'll be through-ough." they chime, Georgie bopping up and down with her guitar. "Well, that'll be the day-"

"When you say goodbye, yes-" she interrupts.

Georgie rejoins. "That'll be the day, that you make me cry, well-

"You say you're gonna leave, well, you know that's a lie, 'cause-"

"That'll be the day-ay-ay" she says, drawing out the word. "That I die!"

"That I die!" Georgie harmonizes poorly. Pauline snorts.

"And now Georgie on guitar!" Georgie calls to no-one. She plucks out the first few pealing notes of the guitar riff, realizes she's messed it up, and starts making up her own tune. Pauline swings her guitar over her shoulder, playing an attempt at the bass notes while Georgie chips out the guitar solo.

"Georgina Harrison, ladies and gents. " she says. She thumps her foot in time. 

"Well, that'll be the day when you say goodbye," Pauline resumes, "That'll be the day when- you- make- me- cry- y- y-" they stamp out the last five words onto the rattling bus floor. "Well, that'll be the day- when I die, oh!"

"Ba- bump- tss!" Georgie says, finishing triumphantly. They both play a chiming, discordant, final note. Pauline is pink-cheeked, laughing. She's about to start another, when-

She hears something.

From the back of the bus- someone is clapping. She looks over, and he flow of blood to her brain ceases.

Joanne Lennon is standing at the other end of the top row, smirking. 

She looks as cheerfully disheveled as ever, wearing a rumpled, dusty coat. A playful, halfway-to-laughing smirk is playing around the corners of her mouth, and her smudgy eyebrows are raised in amusement. The fluorescent lights of the bus make her skin look paler, dramatizing the dark gleam of her eyes.

"Capital!" she calls. "Simply capital!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Pauline can see Georgie duck her head in embarrassment. 

"Ah, hurrah!" she says. "Splendid!" she continues, in a funny, nasal kind of voice. 

Pauline realizes she should respond in some way. She ticks around slowly, trying to assemble syllables. Joanne, Joanne, Joanne, says her brain.

"Hello." she presents her, finally.

Joanne sways over, holding onto the seats for stability. She thumps down next to Pauline. "Congratulations to the both of ye," she says, "on about the worst Buddy Holly I've ever heard. M' Joanne Lennon, also." she says to Georgie.

Pauline realizes belatedly that the two have never actually met, and she should probably have introduced them. But Joanne is sitting next to her- the first time that's ever happened, actually- and she smells like cigarette smoke and slightly like chips, and her shoulder is just brushing Pauline's. She's not very close but too close at the same time.

"Georgina Harrison. Pauline won't shut up about ye." she responds matter-of-factly.

Pauline jerks up, trying to communicate death threats to Georgie through eyebrow gestures. "She's just having a laugh." she says, turning to Joanne.

"Well, charmed, I'm sure." she says. 

"You're the Quarrymen, then." Georgie says. She has apparently decided now is the time to be cordial and talkative. This is highly inconvenient- why can't she just be her usual clamlike self?

Joanne looks over to her. From here, Pauline can see her profile in overwhelming, microscopic detail- the curve of her ear, the fine baby hairs brushing down over her cheek, the angular curve of her jaw. "S'pose." she says. "Not much call for Quarrymen these days."

"Not much call for unsolicited criticism, neither." says Georgie. Pauline tenses for an outburst from Joanne, but she only laughs, showing her teeth.

Damn it. How come they're getting on so well? They've only just met. Why is Georgie so much better at talking to her than Pauline? She's supposed to be the social one.

Pauline pipes up. "We're a band as well."

"Ah, really?"

She tries to keep from laser-focusing on how Joanne's jaw moves when she talks. "The Trebelles." she nods.

"The Trebelles," repeats Joanne liltingly. "I see. Where're you playing, then?"

"Ah, it's this new club called the 157." she says quickly.

"Oh, is it," Joanne laughs, making the corners of her eyes crinkle. Pauline feels her ribs hum warmly, singing with approval.

"Quarrymen oughter get their own bus. Hear the 223 en't taken." she says, smiling too.

Joanne shakes her head. "Can't, son- it cost two pence to get in and I'm flat broke."

"How'd you get on this one, then?" Georgie says.

Joanne crooks her eyebrows and makes a suggestive gesture towards the driver.

"Really?" says Georgie.

"No, I got on fast at a busy stop." she says in a more normal tone. The bus turns a corner, and her shoulder presses fully into Pauline's. The warmth burns a hole through her, and her nerves fizzle strangely.

Joanne has noticed nothing. "What brings a pair of nice birds such as yourselves out to Woolton at half past eleven?"

"Well," Georgie says, but before she can finish, Pauline says, "We went out to Bess's party and got lost comin' back."

"Fellas didn't drive ye?"

"Nah. He's a bastard." says Georgie wisely.

"Oh, cheers." Joanne agrees merrily. "But then what's the guitars for?"

"We was gonna play at Bess's. Changed our minds, though. She asked us to play." Pauline says coolly, darting a look at Georgie.

"Ah." Joanne's smile has stilled.

"Played at Lottie Sullivan's, as well, last night. Dunno if you know her." Pauline says, fabricating a person on the fly.

"Did you." Her eyes flick over Pauline's face, and she watches their path. She wishes she knew what she was thinking.

"Ta." she says. She continues, carefully, "But we was wondering- we was having some trouble with C'mon Everybody- do you know-"

"Yes." Joanne says immediately.

"Well, it needs three guitars. But we've only got two."

"Ah." Joanne looks at her narrowly, considering. "Well, as a matter of fact, I'm playing at Lottie's as well tomorrow. So I'm all booked."

Shit. She knows she was lying. How did she know? Pauline's good at lying, usually.

She pauses. "Quarrymen need two more guitarists, though." she says.

Ah, Pauline thinks. Well. This is the deal then. I won't join your group, but you can join mine.

She weighs the two options. It takes less than a second.

"S'pose so." she says casually. "Could give ye a hand." Mentally, she rewinds through her elaborate reel of Trebelles fantasies and blacks over the name with Quarrymen. There, done.

"Ta." Joanne says. She smiles, a sideways, ironic, taking-the-piss smile, changing back like that, her posturing aloofness gone, like switching languages. "Pleased to do business with you." she says, holding her hand out for a shake.

Pauline shakes it firmly. "A pleasure."

Joanne holds out her hand for Georgie. "Charmed." Georgie shakes it with utter seriousness, which makes both of them snicker. 

It's slowly dawning on Pauline what she's just agreed to.

Joanne stands up, swaying a little. Pauline feels a cold spot where her shoulder was. "Well, best of night to both of ye's. Be seeing ye." She lurches towards the stairs.

"Wait-" says Pauline. "Where are we meeting?"

But she's already halfway down the stairs. The bus hisses, then inhales noisily again, revs, and they're off, minus Joanne. She tries to get to the window to see her go, but it's too dark.

She sits back down. Her head and stomach are vibrating, glowing like coils. She's in the band.

Georgie is fiddling with her tuning. "She seemed nice."

Pauline has barely spoken to any of her friends in weeks. She also might have just broken up with her boyfriend. But the only thing she can bring herself to care about it- she's in the band. The realization courses through her whole body- she's in the band, she's in the band, she's in the band.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a spotify playlist for this!! https://open.spotify.com/user/squelerious/playlist/70ENlWR9TkR3Xaw2Oo7rGJ?si=fCRq3WvPQxylF6hfX_UtgA  
> It has all the songs mentioned in the fic so you can listen along, if you'd like!

Joanne says she'll come over at noon on Monday. Georgie is grounded for staying out till nearly midnight the night before, and so Pauline is left on her own. She spends most of the morning cleaning- or rather, wandering around the house, fussing. Up in her room, she reshuffles a stack of exercise books, replacing them on the shelves. But would it be better if they were messy? She doesn't want to seem too prim and proper. She settles for them on her desk, but neatly arrayed in a stack. Hopefully that walks the line between relaxed and messy and prim.

Her stuffed animals she exiles to under her bed, and her embroidery projects to her closet. There's little she can do about her floral walls or girlish furniture, and she gazes at it, sighing. Hopeless.  
She won't be caught in an apron this time. Pauline spends ages selecting her outfit- a stylishly narrow black skirt and a wide-collared top that shows just the tips of her shoulders. It's the most modern thing she can come up with, hopefully a match to Joanne. She's certainly not about to go digging around in her father's closet for slacks. No little white gloves, no saggy cotton housedresses, no dishtowels over her shoulder. She doesn't even put on lipstick- although she does pat on some foundation.  
She fiddles with her skirt in the mirror. She could just see herself hanging out at the College of Art, smoking homemade cigarettes with those mod kids. She poses, hip skewed, deadpan expression on. She imagines her and Joanne hanging around those smoky little cafes they frequent, talking in that deadpan, drawling slang, drinking wine, Joanne's hand on her arm, being bored and witty.  
She takes a drag on her pretend cigarette. "Ginsberg's out, baby." she says languidly. From across the smoky room, Joanne watches her, keen-eyed, admiring her intelligence and forthrightness, amused, but with her, not at her.

Suddenly she feels silly. She's sixteen, almost, and here she is acting like a kid playing dress-up. Ridiculous. She slumps out of her pose.

Noon passes and Joanne isn't there. The clock ticks on to one, and still she hasn't shown up. By this time, Pauline has tried on three different outfits and cleaned every dish in the kitchen. Sunlight slides across the gleaming cutlery, and Pauline perches on the couch, leg jiggling, trying to practice, her concentration wavering up and down like radio static.

When Joanne finally arrives, at fifteen after one, Pauline has almost worked herself into a frenzy. She bursts for the door at the first knock, throwing it open.

At the sight of Joanne on her porch, guitar in hand, hair mussed, the tension she realized she'd built up in her chest dissipates like mist. Joanne smiles. Her hair is lit from behind by the sun, making her look as if she's ablaze. 

"Cor." she says. "It's murder out." Her face is flushed in the heat. She strides inside as if she owns the place. 

"Can I get ye somethin'?" Pauline says, clicking back into housewife setting in her nervousness.

"Nah." Joanne says breathlessly. "Let's play, let's play, let's get it crackin'." She thumps up the stairs without preamble, Pauline tagging behind.

Pauline had worried about having Joanne over again, to play this time. She wanted terribly for Joanne to like her, and felt so strangely fumbly and nervous whenever she thought about her. But as soon as Joanne throws herself down decisively on her bed and pulls out her guitar, she forgets about all that.

Joanne Lennon is truly terrible at playing guitar. Pauline hadn't been able to see it when she'd first watched her play -over a month ago, now- but now, with Georgie's teaching, it's obvious. She's just awful. Her method seems to involve a random combination of banjo chords and cheerfully inaccurate strumming. Her strategy seems to be hitting the strings at a rhythm similar to that of her chosen song, belting the lyrics over the sound, and making up for her abysmal playing with performance. Her implacable, seemingly unperturbed shittiness is sort of admirable.

Pauline stops playing. They've been trying to duet Roll Over Beethoven, but she's completely impossible to harmonize with.

"Roll over Beethoven, rock these rhythm and blues- Why'd ye stop?" Joanne says, still banging away vigorously.

Pauline has no idea to phrase this nicely. She remembers Joanne's earlier anger when her skill was questioned. "Why don't- why don't we start with somethin' simpler? Slower, maybe."

Joanne stops playing. "Like what?"

"Well, we could start with some chords, maybe-"

Joanne's face snaps shut. Now that she's seen it happen before, it's almost remarkable to watch, though the change in her expression is slight. But it's as definite as a door closing.

"Hot Cross Buns first, then maybe Mary Had a Little Lamb, is that right?"

"Listen, I can just show ye the basics, then we can do proper songs-"

Joanne takes her hands off her guitar and sets back on her elbows, leaning far back away from Pauline's spot on the bedspread. Her white t-shirt stretches over her shoulders and chest, and Pauline can see every wiry tendon in her angled arms. Joanne slumps her head forward.

"Why'd ye ask me to be in the band, Miss Prim, if I'm such shit?"

"Didn't say you were shit-"

"May's well have. Why'd you bleedin' have me over if you don't want me to play?"

"Because-" she says. But she discovers she can't find a satisfactory answer. She combs backwards through her brain. Because- she thinks. Because I want to see you. She looks at Joanne, all right angles and disheveled carelessness on her bed, slumped backwards, her guitar sliding off her lap, one leg dangling, sitting in a way no girl would ever sit. Because you're the only person like you I know. 

She doesn't say this. "Because we should have three members." she stumbles.

Joanne narrows her eyes, but doesn't challenge this. She says nothing. Her face looks as open and friendly as a brick wall.

If she leaves now, Pauline thinks, she won't come back. '"Listen-" she pushes out. "Am I in the Quarrymen or what?"

"S'pose." says Joanne. 

"Then- then let me show ye some chords. Ye need me in the Quarrymen. And-" she stumbles. "I need you- too. You're a better performer than me or Georgie." It's true. Pauline knows she can't let go of her propriety enough to truly relax into a performance, and Georgie is so self-conscious and gawky. But Joanne has a thousand degrees of confidence and absolutely no dignity- she does that well, at least. 

Joanne considers her for one precarious second. Then she lets the tension out of her shoulders and sits back up, slumping over her guitar. "S'pose." she drawls. Her tone isn't much different than before, but Pauline can see some of the warmth fill back into her eyes. 

"Right." says Pauline, thrilled. "Right. Well, let's do A, then."

Joanne, having evidently decided to accept Pauline's instruction, is a quick study. She hunches over her guitar, fingers tangling over the strings, picking carefully. Her messy hair flops over her head, drooping over her eyes. Pauline's legs cramp on her narrow mattress, and her room grows muggy and close as the afternoon passes outside, but she stays put.

She gets down A, D, and E. Pauline can't say she's not impressed. 

"There." she says, strumming E firmly. 

"All right, then." Pauline says. "Show us D again, then." 

Joanne, peering down her long nose, positions her hands carefully.. 

"No- a fret up."

Frowning, she moves her hand up. She tries to recreate the position, her long fingers splaying across the strings. Joanne's eyelashes are dark and surprisingly long against her pale cheeks. Pauline can see the faint, fine blue veins under her eyelids. She's never noticed it before, but she can see how her eyes move under her lids, if she looks closely. Joanne's pale, but she almost looks luminescent, like she's lit from within. 

"There?" she says. Pauline jumps. 

"Er. Think so. Try a strum."

She does. It sounds pleasingly accurate. A smile jumps up, startled out of her, flashing quickly up her lips and down again. She strums another. 

Pauline can see her wrist trembling, just a bit. "Here," she says. "Try lining your fingers up a bit straighter- helps with the strain."

Joanne tries, but her fingers slip off the strings. 

"No, like-" says Pauline, and reaches forward. She presses Joanne's fingers back, angling her wrist down. Joanne's hand is warm, her skin smooth, and Pauline's stomach flips. Her fingers skim over the soft, living elasticity of her skin. 

Joanne looks up into her eyes, which seem closer. She can feel her pulse pumping in her wrist, matching the flush of her cheeks. She smells faintly of sweat, and Pauline can see fine marks of perspiration at her temples. She feels suddenly, sharply aware of how preciously alive she is- which is silly, of course she's alive. But she can feel her pulse, there in her wrist, and the graceful structure of her bones, the humming warmth of her skin, and it all feels so much more real and present than it did two seconds ago. 

Joanne licks her lips. Pauline feels intensely warm, can feel all the blood in her own body, hear the jagged pulsing of her own heart. She's so close to her. She's sure she's never been this close to a person before. 

Then Joanne shuffles back. Pauline lifts her hand.

"Right, got it." Joanne says roughly. She wiggles back to sit with her back up against the wall, directs her gaze back down at her guitar. 

Pauline feels suddenly as though she's across an ocean from the other girl, though she's only on the other end of the bed. She clears her throat delicately, finds her train of thought again. "Try it now." she says, hoping the strange churning she feels in her stomach doesn't come out in her voice.

Joanne strums again. 

"Right." says Pauline, her clamouring thoughts quieting. "Try A, D, A, A, then E."

She obliges. A-D-A-A-E. She looks up.

"Johnny B. Goode?" she asks, recognizing the riff. 

Pauline nods, smiling.

Joanne goes back to her guitar, looking genuinely excited. She plays it again, A-D-A-A-E. Then again, at the right speed. 

Pauline, encouraging, chimes in with a pattering backing rhythm. Joanne repeats the chords, swaying, then again, getting into it. 

"Deep down in Louisiana- whoops-" she fumbles the chord, then recovers it. "Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans, way back up in the woods among the evergreens, there stood a log cabin made of earth and wood, where lived a country boy named Johnny B Goode!" she peals in her voice- rough, but clear. She shimmies her shoulders, shaking her head back and forth, her hair flopping wildly.

"Now she didn't know how to play the guitar so well-" Pauline jumps in, daringly. 

"But she'd tell ye if she could to go to Hell!" Joanne chants back.

Pauline snickers. "Go, go, Johnny, go, go!" she calls. 

"Go, Pauly, go, go!" Joanne counters, whooping, fingers jumping on the strings. 

She plays her four chords faster and faster, eyes gleaming, daring Pauline to keep up, to keep her complicated four-square backing rhythm straight. Looking into her eyes, hand jerking up and down across the neck of the guitar, she does. Pauline matches her, note for note, shimmy to shimmy. 

"She used to carry her guitar in a gunny sack, she used to -wouldn't you like to know- down by the railroad track-" Joanne says. Pauline stifles a laugh.

"His mother told her someday she'd be a man," Joanne continues, eyebrows raised wickedly, "and you will be the leader of a big old band- only ye won't, that's me- Go, Pauly, go, go! Go Pauly-"

Pauline slips her fingering up for laughing, and attempts to recover. Joanne continues her four chords, faster and faster. "Go, Joanne-y, go, go! Too slow, Pauly! Go, Joanney!"

"Stop, stop!" Pauline wheezes, trying to catch her breath. 

"Who's better now!" Joanne says, whooping, continuing doggedly on her four chords.

"You en't- you only got four chords to play-" Pauline protests, still out of breath from laughing.

"And I played 'em, Pauly, not like you, slackin' off, now."

"Slackin'?" Pauline gasps. Joanne releases her last chord, and slumps back. Pauline does the same. She realizes, with some surprise, that the sun is fast disappearing. She'd been so focused on Joanne- she'd barely noticed. 

"Cor, it's late." Pauline says. "I oughter start dinner."

"Aw, Pauly." Joanne wheedles. "One more."

Pauline sighs. "All right."

Joanne perks up. "Brilliant."

They do La Bamba, which neither of them really know the lyrics to, but they're Spanish, so they don't matter. It gives Joanne an opportunity to shout gibberish and yell, which she seems to like. Pauline wishes she could do that- completely let go, stop caring about who's watching and where she's putting her hands and how her hair looks and just jump around and yell.

She stand with her legs far apart and guitar held low, shoulders tipped back so her hips are forward, knees bobbing. Her movements are sharp, jerking with the tense beat of the song. She looks just like Ritchie Valens, except for the lyrics. 

"Ah, La Bamba! Ah, la bamba! Ah, la bamba, si necessity. Una nickel-and-dime-a, blah blah blah, for me and you, la-la-la, arriba arriba!" she shouts hoarsely. She tilts her chin high, hair flopping as she bobs her head, and winks at Pauline.

Pauline hoots with unladylike laughter. "I can't do the guitar-"

"Arriba, arriba! Rotisserie, rotisserie!" Joanne belts, uncaring. She gives up on the guitar and just claps. "Hey!" she whoops. "Soy captain, soy captain! Mozzarella, mozzarella! Conquistador!" There are two bright spots of pink on her cheeks, and a smile is playing around her lips as she watches Pauline shake with laughter.

"Lennon- you'll kill me-"

"Ah wa-wa-wa, Spanish, Spanish. Spanish, who-knows. Ba-ba-ba-ba la bamba!" She smirks, the picture of live-wire confidence. Pauline dissolves into giggles.

Her da isn't pleased when he comes home to find his dinner not ready, but she doesn't care. She can feel the warmth of Joanne's smile the rest of the evening and into the night, like a syrupy sweetness at the back of her throat. She's promised to come back so they can rehearse- tomorrow, and the day after. She swirls her hands in the hot, soapy dishwater, listening to the fuzzy strains of Radio Luxembourg the room over.

That evening, she sifts through the papers on her desk- note pages, napkins, receipts, all scrawled with lyrics- Elvis, Eddie Cochrane, Buddy Holly, gleaned like precious jewels from Radio Luxembourg. She finds a clean sheet and a pen, and begins a rough sketch. If they're to be the Quarrymen, they'll need a good logo.


End file.
